This is not a suicide note. In fact, I think it’s a sign that I’m relatively quite far off from that. But I have to warn you up front that I am unwell and have been that way for a long time. Also, in case you are easily triggered (and I mean that in the clinical sense of the term, not the “lol, I’m a troll top kek fuck ur feelings dur-hur-hur” sense,) the tl;dr is that I’m dealing with a wonderful cocktail of clinical depression, anxiety, uncategorized learning disability, and possible internet addiction.

I don’t know if you’ve picked up on it. One of the things I’ve learned about myself the past few months is that I’m very good at hiding when I’m in pain or need something. I’m what I call “the designated good kid.” I’ve been the DGK longer than I’ve had my other issues. I may…

The first thing the Pict did was dig around in my pocket, grab my cPhone, and silence it. “Can’t really deal with that at the moment,” he muttered, tossing it on sink. I winced. Yes, this phone was designed to take a .44 Magnum round or two to the screen and still function, but it was still a valuable piece of equipment.

“You know,” I gasped, worried that my lung had collapsed yet again, “that’s not going to hold them forever.” It was true. That M4 basically would only stop someone trying to kick the door down. If you got a battering ram or some breeching charges, the bathroom door would cease to be a door.

“It doesn’t have to,” the Pict said, pulling out two of the old, bulky flip phones, a more modern one, a Gameboy Color, a metal water bottle with a strange box attached, a few cable splitters, and a bunch of wires. He then began hooking them up on the table.

“That…” I said, “that’s not… You wouldn’t. You’ve put in too much effort.”

The Pict turned around and smiled. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“It’s not a bomb,” I said, as he began sticking the daisy-chained electronics into my vest. “Those… those are…” I took a deep, gasping breath. It burned. “Those are a bunch of obsolete… electronics you found at garage sales… and the last Radioshack on Earth.”

“It’s amazing,” the Pict said, standing back to admire his handy work, “what even people in caves can make explosives look like. Of course, I had some help.”

This wasn’t right. He couldn’t be doing this. He’d come so far trying to take me alive. “Motive…” I began. Shit. This wasn’t as bad as the collapsed lung, but I was still having trouble speaking. Maybe I had some sort of concussion as well.

“Spite.” Despite his goggles and gas mask, I could feel his look of disgust, even as his voice remained highly professional. “My motive is spite.”

“Makes sense,” I said. Before, I had been seventy-five percent positive he had been lying. Now I was only fifty-one percent sure. But the real question wasn’t whether I believed it. It was whether or not the various angry cops would even bother to check before blowing open the door with shaped charges and shooting everything inside.

As I considered this, the Pict seemed to be checking his inventory. He took out a Sgian, a Glock, a SIG-Sauer, and 1911 of some kind and laid them on the sink counter as well as some spare magazines. Judging by the fact that he threw both the spare magazines and the Sgian in the trash with a noise of disgust, those mags were for the Sgian. He then took out a nightstick and several more shiny black spheres and placed them on the counter in an orderly manner as well.

Then I saw something move under the door. It was something I only used once or twice in CQB courses. They’re called snake cameras and they’re the coolest things ever. Basically, they’re a camera at one end of a skinny hose, with a viewing device on the other end.

The Pict saw it as well. “Like it?” he asked loudly so the people on the other side could hear, patting my shoulder. “It will blow this building to bits and disperse a hallucinogenic gas in a one hundred meter to twenty-kilometer radius, depending on atmospheric conditions. If you follow my directions, it won’t detonate.”

“What do you want?” a voice responded nervously.

“I want you to move your line back to the nearest intersection,” the Pict said, “and I want you to remove the snake cam. I will issue more demands at-” The phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said.

“Is that your boss?” the person on the other end asked. Honestly, seeing as the Picts had a psionic link, the likelihood of his boss calling him on my cellphone was astronomically low. Still the FBI couldn’t know either of those pieces of information, so his guess made sense.

“Leave the hallway,” the Pict said. “Now.” I heard boots quickly back off. The Pict waited a while, then stuck a small object underneath the door. I wondered if it was a booby trap or his own camera. He then went over to my phone and hung up again.

Immediately after he had set it down to check the stalls, it began to ring again. He yelled in frustration and began kicking open doors angrily. When he was done, he walked over to the phone and answered it sweetly with, “Hello, Mr. Jacobs is busy. Can I-” He was instantly cut off. “No, I’m very busy, and so is he. Please… no, I… no I’m not going to let talk to my hos-Mr. Jacobs. Yes, he’s in trouble. Now please…” For about five minutes, he just listened to the person on the other end. Finally, he sighed and said, “It’s for you.”

As he held it up to my ear, I wondered who it was. “Hello,” I said hesitantly.

“Nate.” Ah. It was May Riley, friend and business partner. She made medicine, I made guns. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “things got kind of messy in Japan.”

“Yeah,” May said. “FBI messy! Nari, Andy and I are in fucking Australia and an FBI officer just had a talk with us. About you. I didn’t even know they could do law stuff internationally!”

“Yeah,” I said, “they kind of can. Hey, why are you in Australia?”

“We got a bunch of emergency contracts after you left,” May said. “We’ve been setting up medical and weapons contracts all across the Pacific. I’ve been bouncing from Japan to Australia to Vietnam and back for weeks.” She paused, then said accusingly. “You’re distracting me.”

“I shouldn’t be pleasantly surprised,” May said. “Why are you there and not an interrogation room?”

I leaned towards the Pict. “Hey,” I asked, “how much can I tell my friend?”

“Who’s your friend?” he asked. I didn’t answer. There were reasons they might want to go after May, Andy and Nari. Chief among them was that they were all pretty much geniuses with very applicable skills for someone planning an invasion. The Pict, realizing how long it was taking me to respond, took the phone away from my head. “Conversation’s over,” he said.

We then spent several hours with me just kneeling there and the Pict just pacing around. Eventually, I asked him, “Shouldn’t they be asking for demands?”

“Maybe,” he said. “They might be looking into my threat.”

“Is it real?” I asked.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Honestly,” I said, “I’m not sure. It seems more like you’re delaying. After all, you’re Dragon’s Teeth. For all I know, you could have an invasion force ready to-”

“Quiet,” he said suddenly. “I hear something.”

“Hear what?” I asked. “All I can hear is this ringing sound.”

“I forgot,” he said. “You’re baseline. You don’t have reinforced eardrums.” He picked up one of the pistols, the 1911, and walked over to the wall. “Someone will need hearing aids.”

I craned my neck to see him put his head to the wall. “Look at the door,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Look at the door.”

I rolled my eyes and looked towards the door. “Ok,” I said, “I’m looking towards the door. Can you tell me what you hear?”

“Oh.” The Pict suddenly seemed very resigned. “Well I guess-” Then, for either a brief moment that felt like an eternity or an eternity that felt like a brief moment, the ringing became everything. Well, the ringing and pain.

So, it’s been two years. Two years since thisbecame a thing. I’m not going to say that this is the serial that changed everything, or will change everything. Honestly, if you go solely by numbers, NIU should have changed nothing. However, numbers lie a hell of a lot.

For instance, my life has been changed. Whether for better or worse, its hard to to say. I mean, I’ve only been doing this for two years. I can say that thanks in part to the internet, and thanks in part to whoever is reading my little ramblings, I am living my dream of being a world famous author. (Ok, definitely not famous, but people all over the world are reading this, and thinking about it gives me this wonderful mix of sheer panic and joy.)

Seriously, though, I would like to take this time to thank some people. I…

That’s the last thing I had thought after the Escalade’s hatch opened. Lydia and Andrew threw the person face-first onto the pavement. The man landed face-first. As he lay face-first on the floor, I noticed that his legs were splayed at odd angles and the twist ties that bound his wrists were not only tight enough to cut off circulation, but they were also too tight for the old “dislocate your thumb and slip out” trick. I knew because both thumbs were broken, as well as both hands.

“Not so tough now, huh, bitch?” Andrew asked.

“Fuck you, monkey!” the man in the hood said in Japanese-accented English. I winced. I didn’t want to see what Andrew would do when pushed too far. “You think I’m scared of some scum American street sweepers failed to pick up?”

Instead, the woman with the burned face stepped in. Brutally, she ripped off his mask. Judging by the way he yelled and the marks on his face, some of his cuts had begun to scab up and mesh with the bag. Leaning in close, the woman said quietly, “Now this brings…”

She was interrupted by the man smashing his head into her face. Her sunglasses were knocked askew and she laughed. “Ha ha… this really does bring back memories!” She grabbed the man by the shoulder and squeezed. “Maybe you already figured it out by the accent, but I was an enforcer here.”

I suddenly realized what was going to happen. Not only was it going to be immoral, but it was going to be loud and it was going to be a freaking beacon for the cops. The problem was I didn’t want to undermine Jen. I didn’t understand the power dynamics at play. If I seemed to give orders, it could end up with Jen’s subordinates getting ideas or Jen shooting me to prevent the former.

I looked to Jen. She was staring at a point directly behind our captive, as if someone was there, trying to convince her of something. She frowned, obviously torn about something.

Meanwhile, her subordinate with the burned face continued her monologue. I swear, it was something she had rehearsed. “The first thing I always had to do with deadbeats,” she said, “was teach them respect.” As soon as she said “respect,” her hand burst into flames. The man screamed.

That snapped Jen out of it. “Kaori!” she said. “This isn’t the time or the place.” Kaori nodded sullenly. She turned to address the rest of her team. “Knock him out and put him back in the car. We need to get moving now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lydia said. She drew a tazer from a holster and shot the man in the back with it. He grunted and convulsed, then slumped down. Andrew drew a Glock, then he and Lydia both pistol-whipped the man in the head several times for good measure. Meanwhile everyone else piled into the Escalade. Luckily, there were eight seats in the monster. John and I sat in the rear on either side of Mayu.

“So,” I asked Mayu, “what the hell happened when we were away?” While I asked the question, I noticed Jen was busy texting someone from the row in front of us.

“Oh,” Mayu said, “the Defenders showed up.” I noticed she didn’t seem to be taking that too hard. “The Defenders seemed to have thought that they could use the same trick twice. I did not see how Kaori and Hiromasa restrained them. We just found them on the air vent at the top of the building.”

“What happened to the others?” John asked nervously.

From the front of the car, the burly man I assumed to be Hiromasa chuckled. “We made them disappear,” he said.

Doing my best not to shudder, I reached for my phone. Then remembered I had thrown it out a car window. I needed to tell John and Mayu what we were in the car with. John, seeing as he was from New Hampshire, probably had guessed already. Mayu, however might not have picked up how deep we were in.

Kaori and Hirosama Murakami had been indicted a little after I had started High School. They had been taken into custody after a member of the Minutemen, Massachusetts’s local hero group, had managed to temporarily unmask a female Fire Elemental working for the Kagemotos named Tatsu and get a picture of her face with his body cam. Then he had leaked it to the newspapers and police.

It was quickly determined that the person in the picture was Kaori Murakami, a woman who officially was a bodyguard to Mark Kagemoto. Her husband and fellow bodyguard, Hirosama Murakami was one of Kaori’s most vocal defenders… at least until a writer at the Globe pointed out that he was of similar build to another supervillain called Dokustsu. Then, probably under the advice of his lawyer, he shut up. Then the rumors came out that before he came to the US, he had been responsible for strange disappearances and his wife had been a particularly aggressive debt collector.

For a while, it looked like the Kagemotos were going to lose Tatsu and Dokustsu, two of their heaviest hitters. Then there were accusations that the image had been faked. The camera somehow went missing, and the leader of the Minutemen kicked out the member who had taken the picture. A few years later, it was reported that the member had gone missing. The Murakamis were somehow never indicted.

I looked at John. He seemed to realize the situation we were in, too. Mayu, meanwhile, just seemed her normally bubbly self. Then again, she had seemed her normally bubbly self while watching our prisoner get tased and pistol-whipped. It was obviously just an act, but I had no clue what was underneath.

Andrew probably was also wondering what had happened. “So, uh, Mayu, right?” He asked.

“Hmm?”

“You done this before?” he asked nervously, “I mean, I know Nate and John have done stuff like this before and… and I’ve known a lot of people in this business, but I’ve never seen anyone react like you, y’know?”

“Oh no,” Mayu said. “This is all quite new to me.” I doubted that. She was the last person to survive in a pocket dimension of assassins, the rest had been either murdered or had committed suicide. She must have sensed that people weren’t buying it, because she added, “I have spent a lot of time training for this. It is a shame that…” she paused, hand on her mouth, “…that the people who trained me wanted me to do something different then what I signed up for.”

I nodded. I knew what that was like. When I found out that the international Parahuman investigation agency UNIX had sent me to NIU just for me to die, I had become rightly pissed off. I had felt abandoned and betrayed. I also became a huge asshole and a danger to myself and others.

I was distracted by John saying, “Hey… do the seats seem kind of hard to you?”

I paused. John was right. The seats were harder than you would expect a luxury car to be. I wiggled my butt around and found that most of it was soft in some places. In other places, it was hard. The shape seemed familiar. Suddenly, it clicked. Oh shit, I thought.

“Oh yes,” Jen said. “That reminds me, I still think we should make the meet.”

“No,” Jen said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Why would I, an upstanding citizen with no need for extra cash stoop to gun running?”

“Well,” John said while Mayu giggled, “she did say she wasn’t smuggling in guns.” I just glared at him. “Hey,” he said, “when I’m negative about everything, things still go wrong. I’d rather be positive.”

The car drove on in silence for quite a while. Eventually, we came to a farm. The car pulled onto the dirt road and parked behind some tall stalks of corn or wheat. Outside, the sun was starting to come up. “Everyone,” Jen said, “get the product out and ready for display. We have time, so also please remove our friend from the trunk as well. I would like to change into something a little more… imposing.”

“And… where is the product?” I asked.

“Just cut into the seats,” Kaori said.

John and I followed her directions. It didn’t take long for me to see the dust cases and ammo tins. The extremely familiar dust cases and ammo tins. “Jennifer,” I said, my voice dangerous, “how the fuck did you get these?”

“Not from you.” Jen said. “Really, Nathan, haven’t you heard of the Second Amendment?”

“Are they a special type of gun?” Mayu asked.

“Yes.” I said. “I made them.” There, in the back seat alone, were at least six Maccabee assault rifles, six Ballpeen SMGs, and twelve Uilon Mangchi pistols, plus several tins of ammo. “I also specifically set up distribution so that civilians couldn’t get them.”

“I thought Kagemoto-sama was a criminal,” Mayu said.

“She should have gotten them in the same way as a civilian,” I said. “In other words, she shouldn’t have been even able to put down an offer.”

“Normally,” Jen said, “you’d be right. However, the Boston and New York police accidentally over-ordered your weapons and ammo. I took them off their hands. It was quite the steal.” She laughed at her own joke.

“Any reason I should help you sell them?” I asked Jen.

“Our next safe house kind of depends on selling them.”

I let out a growl of frustration and slammed my fist down on a Maccabee dust case. There was a tense silence. Finally, I said, “Fine. Fine. Let’s just get this over with.” I also made a mental note to do an investigation into the BPD and NYPD when I got out of this.

In the meantime, I helped everyone unload the car of all the contraband. In the end, we had around six Maccabee rifles, eighteen Ballpeen SMGs, twenty-four Uilon Mangchis, and a decent amount of ammo. Plus, our friends seemed to have gotten out their own weapons. The Murakamis didn’t seem to have any weapons, but Hirosama was carrying a black case. Lydia and Andrew both had Glocks and tasers holstered underneath their jackets. Lydia had also taken the grease gun from Jen.

When the product was all unloaded, Lydia and Andrew opened up the rear of the car and threw out our prisoner. We watched him groan a bit for a while. Finally, Andrew asked, “Yo, you guys think she wants this asshole conscious?”

John and I shrugged. Hirosama said, “It is not our job to guess what she wants. Do nothing except watch him.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, “he’s just faking it.” His wrists were now bleeding and the zip tie was slightly frayed. “Apparently, this fucker found a sharp surface.”

The man opened his eyes to shoot me a dirty look as he got to his knees. I noticed that his eyes were different sizes. He said something in Japanese that I doubted was respectful. Even though my Japanese was terrible, I could tell that he was slurring his speech. He then spit at me. A spray of blood and a tooth landed halfway between us. I have to admit, I was impressed. Here he was, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Parahumans and armed thugs, wearing only his underwear, with both hands literally tied behind his back, and a concussion, yet he was still resisting.

Then the car door opened. Jen had changed from her street clothes into a dark red jumpsuit with bits styled to suggest or imitate Japanese samurai armor. A smooth, solid white mask with horns dangled from her hand. Our captive saw her and smiled.

“You know,” he said evily, “I think I met your brother.”

Jen just stared at him, her expression unreadable. Our captive continued. “The coward ran away when he saw us coming. When he died, he cried like a little girl.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about Brian?” Jen asked, squatting down so she was at eye-level with our captive. I was suddenly struck by how tired she sounded. No anger, no sadistic glee, just a bone-deep weariness.

“Just that I thought he was such a woman that I decided to shoot him in the balls,” our captive said.

“You know,” Jennifer said, “I think you have an understanding of what is going to happen next, right?” Our captive nodded defiantly. Jen sighed and began counting. “So there were my four jailors… the six, right?” She looked at John and me for confirmation. “The six who met us outside the apartment… and however many my bodyguards killed back at the hotel…”

“What are you counting?” our prisoner asked.

“The number of your friends who died,” Jen said, “because you killed the wrong Kagemoto.”

“What do you mean?” Our prisoner was suddenly suspicious. “Surely you want the fortress? You want to reclaim your…”

“Dude,” I said. “I was at your fortress. I talked to some people who maintain it. Not even your elders want it.”

“But…” he said, “the Kagemotos…”

“Haven’t given a solitary shit about it since my father killed grandpa,” Jen said, still in that tired voice. “Hell, Brian didn’t even want the empire we did have.” She smiled bitterly. “That’s why my father tricked you into killing him.” She suddenly made a sound halfway between a chuckle and a sob. “I honestly was hoping I could tell you how badly you’d been manipulated and you’d help me kill my dad, but things somehow got fucked and…”

She stood up, took a moment to console herself, and said, “My brother would want me to let you live. Failing that, he’d like to me to at least shoot you somewhere you’d die instantly.” She stood up, a look of genuine anguish on her face. “I’m sorry I can’t give you either of those things. Hirosama?”

“Wait, what are you…?” Our captive began to ask, but before he could, he began to sink into the ground. He tried to scream or beg, but dirt filled his mouth before he could finish a syllable. In less than a second, there was nothing left of him or any trace he had ever been there.

Before we could ask Jen what she meant, there were the screech of tires. John and I looked outside. There, between us and the early ‘90s era Honda sedan we had stolen, was a white Toyota van illegally parked in the middle of the street. Two subjects, probably male and in their mid-to-late twenties, most likely locals, were getting out from the front.

Every instinct in my body told me that this was not normal. John’s must have been screaming the same thing because we both opened fire in unison. There was the sound of bullets hitting metal and shattering glass and the man closest to us fell down. We could tell he was still alive because he began trying to cover his wounds and calling out in Japanese. I noted, with some degree of relief, that he had dropped a modernized version of a PM-9.

The man who had been shielded behind the car was also gone. John and I, not wanting to be pinned inside, but also not wanting to be shot in the open, moved into new cover behind concrete pillars outside. This proved to be a wise move because not only did the subject we lost contact with pop back up from behind the van’s engine to take pot shots at us with an SMG, but three people with assault rifles and a fourth with a shotgun began opening fire.

I looked at John, who was blindly returning fire with the captured assault rifle (I think it was a Type 89-f.) This wasn’t good. They almost outnumbered us two to one, and I doubted they’d run out of assault rifle ammo before John did. Luckily, we still had some of the toys Lydia and Andrew had given us. I began to come up with a plan.

Before I could signal this to John, I heard several pops of gunfire. There was a weird sensation, like I had been suffocating without realizing it, but now I wasn’t. I tried to look back inside, but some gunfire made me realize what a bad idea that was.

Instead, I motioned my plan to John. Basically, what I was communicating in sign language was a typical plan called leapfrogging. I’d open fire, making the people in the van get down. John would use that as an opportunity to get to a concrete pillar closer to the stairs. Then he would open fire while I tried to get to the bottom without being shot.

When John nodded, showing he understood, I leaned out and began putting bursts into the car. Behind me, I heard John run down behind me. I had managed to time my bursts with most of them reloading. As I fired burst after burst, I suddenly became aware that the downed subject wasn’t the only one screaming. The civilians in the surrounding area had obviously noticed. We needed to leave.

My ammo, understandably, ran out rather quickly. Even with the fifty-round magazine and my trigger control, it was still an SMG with a high rate of fire that someone had recently sprayed and prayed with. Luckily, John had gotten far enough. He glanced up at me, waiting for confirmation. I reloaded, dropping the magazine, then nodded.

In response, John threw one of our party favors. There was a heart-shaking thud, then John leaned out and started firing.

I ran. The explosion’s bite, while impressive, wasn’t as big as its bark. The wounded subject was still alive, trying to drag himself to safety. The van was relatively undamaged, though some of its windows might have not been shattered before the blast. There was a nice crater in the middle of the street, however, around which bits of flames danced merrily. Huh, I thought as I ran down the balcony to the stairs, must be some sort of super-thermite.

As I got to the stairs, I noticed that the gunfire had slackened. I then decided to get greedy and continue down the stairs. It was all going well until I got to the bottom and started running towards one of the parked cars. The subject with the SMG saw me coming, turned to aim…

…And his head split open. Based on how it shattered, it had to be some kind of large, low velocity round from behind. The sound of an M3 chattering away backed that assertion up.

I just ran the final bits to a nearby Subaru four-door. Making sure to get down behind the wheel arches, I took out one of grenades Andrew and Lydia had given us. I flicked it on and rolled it down the street to the van. There were a few seconds where there was a lot of gunfire, but no explosion. Like Marvin the Martian wondering where his Earth-shattering kaboom was, I peeked out from behind the debatable safety of a boxer four.

I was just in time to see the Toyota’s front end rise into the air on a cushion of flame. It fell back to Earth with a massive crash. Then its fuel tank exploded. I remained crouched for a bit as the van burned, waiting for gunfire to start up again. All I heard was sirens. They were actually getting a little too close for my liking.

I got out from behind cover and began walking towards the flaming wreckage. A living column of flame staggered out. I drew out my SIG and put a couple rounds in the flaming subject. After he fell, I began walking towards the subject who had been screaming.

The subject had stopped screaming and seemed to be losing consciousness. He looked up to see me coming and said something in Japanese. I couldn’t make it out, but it didn’t matter. I shot him twice through the heart and once through the head with my SIG. It was both to end his suffering and ensure no witnesses.

“You two are very good at what you do,” Jen said. “Shame that you won’t take my money.”

Ignoring the heart attack she had given me by jumping right behind me, I said, “Honestly, as much as I pretend the difference between us is moral, I sometimes think it’s because I refuse to shit where I eat and sleep.”

“Interesting theory,” Jen said. “I’ll have to keep it in mind.”

I turned around. Not only did I see surprisingly sober and very tired-looking Jen holding an M3 grease gun and a double-barreled shotgun, but I also saw John running down the stairs. “We need to go,” he said. “The cops…”

“At this point,” Jen said, “it would be better to remain here.”

As if to punctuate her sentence, a patrol cruiser turned the corner. Two officers got out nervously, shouting “Anata buki no o otsu! Jimen ni noru!” repeatedly. Based on the context and how they occasionally flicked the barrels to the ground, that probably translated to get on the ground. I noticed that they were armed with crappy revolvers and they weren’t shy about pointing them at us. Unless someone had made a rimmed version of the Uilon Mangchi cartridge and given it to Japanese law enforcement without my knowledge, there was no way in hell they could penetrate the armor John and I were wearing. That didn’t mean they couldn’t get us in the stomach, face or legs, or Jen in the everything.

“Ima sugu sore o doroppu!” Even in the dim light, I could tell that the cop who had yelled that would fire soon. I was honestly surprised the two officers hadn’t already opened up on us. NIU campus security would have already ventilated us.

“Ok…” I said soothingly, holding my SIG by the butt with my thumb and forefinger and shrugging off my PM-9. “I’m dropping my weapons…”

“Yukkuri!” one of the officers shouted, pointing his revolver at John.

“Hai,” John said, “Yukkuri…”

Suddenly, Jen was on top of the police car. The cops had just enough time to make noises in surprise before Jen opened fire. One got both barrels of the shotgun to the back of his head, the other received a five-round burst to his back. Jen then casually tossed the shotgun away and jumped off the roof of the cruiser. “Always a pleasure to deal with law enforcement,” she said. “Especially ones not used to Jumpers.” She peered inside the cruiser.

“Jen,” John said, “what the hell?”

“What?” Jen asked innocently looking up from the cruiser.

“You did just kill two cops,” I said. “That’s going to cause some problems.”

Jen turned back to the cruiser. “Yes, but we won’t be here long enough for it to matter in the long run. Besides, the easiest way for my former hosts to have captured me would be to have outbid the police.”

“Still,” John said, “what the hell?”

Jen rolled her eyes. “Could you be useful and either pass me a bomb or get a car? I don’t think this car has a dash cam, but I do want to make certain.”

I nodded. “John, get the car. Jen, catch.” Making sure I hadn’t activated it, I tossed Jen a grenade. I have to admit, it was quite funny to see the look on Jen’s face when she realized what it was.

“I thought you were trained to be careful with explosives,” she said dryly once she had recovered. I would have been impressed if she had recovered instantly. Instead, she had planted the bomb and ran back to the car. As soon as she sat down, a mushroom cloud turned the cop car into a convertible. A huge chunk of metal bounced off the windscreen of our stolen car, causing it to crack dangerously.

John, who had just started the car and gotten his ski mask off, said, “Fuck this shit.” I suddenly began to rocket forwards, nearly hitting the car we were parallel-parked behind. I heard the screech of rubber. As we hurtled down the street, I noticed the speedometer was hovering around 130 kilometers per hour. “Fuck Charlotte, fuck, the Defenders of Fuji, fuck Japan, fuck this place in particular, and fuck you.”

“John,” I said, noticing the sign with Kanji and a giant 50 emblazoned on it, “speed limit.”

John growled in frustration and put on the brakes. Luckily for us, he was going at a reasonable speed when what seemed to be twenty cop cars drifted around the corner and began heading to the explosion. I breathed a sigh of relief. Jen’s trick had worked on those two cops, but if there had been four, things would have gone to hell.

Speaking of Jen, she had been swearing ever since John had stamped on the gas pedal. It had been loud at first, but now, she was just hoarsely whispering “oh shit” over and over again. I checked back to see how she was doing.

“Do you need a paper bag?” I asked. She nodded. I reached down to the floor where the owner of the car had left his lunch. I emptied the assortment of half-eaten food into the cloth waste basket in the center console and handed the bag to Jen. She took it, then began fiddling with something. It wasn’t until I heard the click that I realized she hadn’t been buckled in.

When she was done, she said, “So, do you mind filling me in?”

She then listened somewhat dazedly as we filled her in. “Do you want to know…” she said, with both a mixture of slyness and lack of breath, “…how Kage Fortress got its name?”

“Let me guess,” I said, “it was named after the Kagemotos. Specifically, your family.”

“Got it in one,” she said wheezily. She coughed for a bit. “My however-many-times great grandfather was lord of the mansion long ago. My however-many-times great grand-uncle, however, was obsessed with some prophecy or something. They had a fight, uncle dies, grandfather gets kicked out, and some creepy Rasputin-like asshole takes over the castle. Despite my family eventually running all the way to the new world, the grudge carried on until my father.” She laughed. “I’m actually surprised. I would have thought he’d have fought them just to have someone to hurt.”

“So,” I said, “why are they after you?”

“My father,” Jen said, in a dangerously conversational tone of voice, “didn’t like it when my brother left. So he lied to them and told them my brother was planning to start the feud again. I’m here to find the ones who murdered my brother, make them talk, then go back home and finally kill my father.”

“Why talk to them?” I asked. “Vengeance? Evidence?”

Jen laughed. “Evidence? I’m a gangster, Nathan. I don’t need evidence. I just need to prove I’d be a significantly better boss than my father or the Jade Emperor to justify killing him. Luckily, at this point, a potato could justify being a better boss than my father.” She shook her head. “Honestly, I just want to know why.”

“Well, now you know,” John said. “Can we leave now?”

I didn’t see Jen’s glare, but I could feel it. “Actually, considering all the property damage and murder, leaving may be for the best. Do you have any idea how we’d do that?”

Then, after a slight pause, Jen said the worst thing I had ever heard up to that point. “I thought you two had a plan.”

We didn’t speak until we had left the keep, with me leading the group out of the castle and into the woods. Well, everyone except for Charlotte. For the entire time we walked, she was making comments on my rudeness. Finally, I turned around and said, “Do you realize how badly you fucked up?”

“Excuse me?” Charlotte said.

“You walked into a room with someone who’s clearly nuts,” I began, “with powerful people probably listening to every word you say, and told them a hell of a lot more than you should.”

“But…” Charlotte protested.

I cut her off. “Did I make a few mistakes? Yes.” I dropped my voice to a whisper in the vain hope that if someone were to eavesdrop on this conversation and the one we had with Mayu they’d miss crucial information. “That little picture of hers took me off guard…” then I resumed in a normal (ok, louder than normal) voice, “but what the hell were you thinking telling everyone you knew The Architect’s identity? And even worse, what do you think Bai would do if she heard that you…”

“That was a lie!” Charlotte said. “Do you seriously think me so low as to lie to a friend?”

“The question isn’t whether I believe you,” I said. “The question is whether they could make Bai believe it. Or anyone else believe it.” I paused, remembering how she hadn’t exactly convinced me when she had made the promise. “You have left it alone, right?”

“Well…” Charlotte said, “Mayu said it best. It would be irresponsible to just leave…” I tensed. If she said Mubashir’s name, there was a very good chance I’d kill her. “…our friend in the hands of people who had no idea what to do with him. I didn’t find him, I just laid a bit of groundwork.”

“Only if they know the truth,” Charlotte said. “And even then, they would have to be rather unreasonable, wouldn’t they?”

“Ok,” John said, taking a deep breath, “what happens if Li finds out Bai told you who The Architect is? Do you think Li is reasonable?” He shook his head. “Not only that, but I don’t think Mayu’s even sane. There’s something seriously wrong with her.”

“Um.” We all turned to look at Charlotte. “The thing about Mayu… we think people in her own organization are planning on killing her. We… don’t want that.”

“Any particular reason?” I asked. Seeing that everyone looked at me with horror, I said, “Look, I know that all life is sacred and stuff. She’s also gotten a raw deal.”

“Fuckin’ A she ‘as,” Eliza murmured darkly.

I continued, “But to get her out, we’d need to kill a lot of people. Then what? What happens when she finds out we don’t want her anywhere near Mubashir?”

Charlotte cleared her throat, then said, “Actually, we may need her.” I raised an eyebrow. “You see, while we don’t need The Architect yet, we need someone who can put a stop to the Dragon’s Teeth and their Goddess… whether or not it they are related to prophecies, final or otherwise.”

“Ok,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean we need her. The Architect is in very good hands.”

“As far as we know,” Charlotte said. “That being said, any number of things could have gone wrong. His former caretakers may want him back, his new caretakers may find him unsatisfactory, he may leave in a fit of pique…”

“This is assuming that you have no resources,” I said. “But you do. You don’t need to take in Mayu.”

“What about control?” Charlotte asked. “If we need Mubashir, how do we control him?” I was about to say something, but Charlotte cut me off. “Oh, don’t tell me how we don’t need to control him. He bloody well admitted to not being able to control himself when his powers were activated. You even saw what happened when his powers manifest on two separate occasions.” It was more like three, but I didn’t feel that was important. Plus, I had only seen the aftereffects of the second time. “If he is provoked again… Well, from your own admission, his episodes seem to be getting bigger.”

I considered this. The first time I had experienced his powers, nothing dramatic had really changed. Yes, I had been felt up by millions of hands in a way that had traumatized me for life, and yes, a brick wall had been subtly altered, and yes, time and space had been bent to hell, but nothing really bad had happened. The next time I had actually witnessed his power in action, I had watched as three people had been turned into gym equipment. Also, thinking about it, I was now unsure if the bunker Mubashir had found had been there before. If it had been there before, I seriously wish Eric and his team had found it during the Hell Semester final.

I also considered something else. “If I’m going to help you,” I finally said to Charlotte, “I need to know, when Mayu told you that The Architect was a chance to make the world perfect…” I paused, because what I was saying sounded insane to me. “…how much did you believe that?”

“I think she’s exaggerating a bit, honestly,” Charlotte said.

“A bit?” John asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, a little more than a bit,” Charlotte admitted, “but I think she sincerely believes that The Architect could be a greater force for good than anything else. Between cultural differences and desperation to be part of something bigger than herself, one could be forgiven for thinking she lied.” The problem with that statement was that I didn’t believe Mayu thought she was lying or exaggerating.

“That isn’t what I was asking,” I said. “What I’m asking is how far are you planning on going with that line of thought.”

“Only as far as our friend wants to go,” Charlotte said. “I promise.”

“I will hold you to that promise,” I said. I wasn’t sure how, Mayu was right about how Charlotte was so powerful. After all, she had brought with her a significant chunk of the UK’s special forces. But this… I’d need to take a stand on this.

“Oi!” Eliza said. “You don’t get to threaten my sister!”

I took a deep breath, but John said, “Yeah, well, she doesn’t get to lie to people and then ask them to trust her. Oh wait! She’s been doing that for almost a year!” He stared directly at Charlotte. “If Bai asks if we kept our promise, I’m either going to have to lie to her or betray you, you understand that, right?”

“I do hope you’ll do the right thing,” Charlotte said.

“You don’t get it,” John said. “There is no right thing! I’m probably going to just flip a coin.” Even for me, someone who was extremely annoyed at Charlotte, this wasn’t good news. I wanted to know exactly what he’d do.

“Konbanwa!!” a bubbly voice behind us said. Charlotte, John and I turned around.

Eliza, who had been facing from the direction the voice was coming from, said, “Bloody fuckin’ ‘ell.” I also heard her flick off the safety of her CZ.

I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. “Mayu,” I said, “we were just talking about you.”

“Oh good!” She said, her smile growing to the eye-closing one I had seen before. “I hope you have found my proposal acceptable.” As we talked, I heard Charlotte call some of her bodyguards, giving them directions to bring a car. I also noticed that Mayu was bleeding from the eyes and nose.

“I’m actually a bit curious about how you managed to get out, actually,” I said.

“Yeah,” John said. “You were in the basement, and I’m pretty sure the entire building is jump-shielded.”

“I read about that while I was away…” Mayu said, putting a finger to her lip and staring off speculatively. “They work by flooding the area with particles to stop us from jumping… I wonder, did their machine create a less dense concentration? Maybe that’s why it felt like I was slipping through a crack? And why this jump was so costly…” Again, I noticed the blood running down her face like wet makeup. She smiled again, one of her big ones, and held up a small scrap of paper. “Or maybe I was just lucky! Just like how Charlotte warned me that the Defenders wanted to kill me!”

“I didn’t think she’d come now!” Charlotte said frantically. “I thought that the note would tell her I was working on convincing them not to, and I’d tell her if…”

“If you’d waited,” Mayu said in her innocent, girlish voice, “the faction that wanted to kill me would have done so, and no one would have been able to prove anything.” She gave one of her big smiles. “I could go back if that’s more convenient for you.”

“No…” Charlotte said. “It would be impossible to get you out then.” She turned to John and me. “You two… get her to Jen. She’ll know where to hide her.”

Mayu nodded eagerly. “Yes. They should have sounded it by now.” She then looked at John and me. “Even if I wanted nothing to do with the plan, I would want to be far away from what is about to happen here.”

Check and mate, Nate, I thought to myself. Mayu had finally found my button, at least in this instance. I didn’t like her. She was too manipulative for my liking, and Charlotte seemed to have a profound weakness for her. I also didn’t like the fact that she could get to me.

“Fine,” I said. “You win.” For now. “I’ll take the car, and then John and I can stash her with Jen… If that’s ok with you, John?”

I was inherently when John glared suspiciously at Mayu and said, “Sure. I’ll come.” I nodded gratefully at him. I really didn’t want to be alone with a manipulative assassin who wasn’t quite stable. Especially seeing as how our interests didn’t align even in the slightest.

We were interrupted by Charlotte’s Maybach pulling up on the road nearby. One of her bodyguards got out. “Well,” Charlotte said, “as Miss Nakashima suggested, you three should probably get a move on. Again, we will contact you.”

We got into the car. Mayu, I noticed, got in the back. That defeated my half-fantasized, half-realized plan of wrapping my arm around from behind her and squeezing. You could be wrong, I reminded myself. She might not be evil. Still, I decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check the rearview mirror every few seconds to see if she was trying something and lock the doors and windows just to be safe.

“Hey Jen…” I said as we started the car, “if you can hear us, please help. We’re kind of in deep shit.” We waited. “I got my cPhone, John has his, you gotta have one of our numbers…” Nothing happened.

“Who is Jen?” Mayu asked. I looked in the rearview mirror, partly to see her reaction, partly because I was due. John, to my satisfaction, was checking Mayu as well. Mayu, for her part, still had her typical smile.

“A person,” I said noncommittally.

“Are you seriously going to be that kind of asshole?” John asked.

I sighed. “Jen is… basically the only other person in this country we know. I’ve avoided her because even knowing her makes things… complicated.” Well, hopefully that wouldn’t be the case now. I mean, if she hadn’t ever gone to Japan before, the local law enforcement wouldn’t be watching her… right?

Then my phone beeped. Not wanting to crash, I pulled the Maybach over to the side of the road and pulled my phone out. It was a text from an unfamiliar number. I sighed. It could be Jen, so I took a look. After I stared at it for a moment, John said, “Judging by the look on your face, I’m guessing it isn’t good news.” I nodded. John sighed. “Fuck me, right?”